Identity Decay

[Trusk'our he/him]

This is a concept I've presented before, albeit only in passing and without much thought put into it. 

After going through my thread musing on what exactly Identity is, I believe it is a sort of frequency that Spiritwebs and, more generally, organized Investiture vibrate to. Identity is integral to Investiture being able to direct itself- with it comes autonomy, removing it makes it easier to be acted upon. 

Interestingly enough, while most forms of Investiture develop an Identity over time, there seem to be examples of organized Investiture that lose their Identity over time. 

The Komashi Nightmares, for example, are Cognitive Shadows with little Identity, which probably explains why they can be controlled by the Father Machine and merge into an amalgamous cloud of Investiture. 

Spoiler

https://wob.coppermind.net/events/526-youtube-spoiler-stream-6/#e16397

Bye Nick

Is the Shroud made of Identity? Or of souls minus Identity? The passage in Yumi seems to imply both?

Brandon Sanderson

We’re looking more at souls. Souls minus Identity is the path you should be going down. I mean, there is still some Identity in them, is the thing, but yeah.

Furthermore, it seems that Shades' Identity decays over time, shown in their outlines and features blurring over the years. In fact, I think it's quite likely that the "Deepest Ones" are something like the shroud in Yumi, being a conglomeration of old Shades who's Identities have decayed enough to let them function as one entity. 

With all this in mind, I hypothesize Hemalurgic spikes may have something similar going on, where the individual Spiritweb fragments decay over time, which also leads to their Identities decaying. 

This might have been at least part of what caused Era 1 Koloss to retain more and more intelligence over time. As their spikes' Identities decayed over generations, the imposed, damaging Identity interference with their own Spiritwebs was reduced. 

Moving forward with this concept, I think that there are some possibilities to leverage this mechanism for improved Hemalurgic performance. 

For example, let's say you normally get about 80-85% of the Investiture of a Metalborn's power when charging a spike. If you allowed it to decay to something like 40%, perhaps it would retain functionality while not having enough Identity to interfere with other Hemalurgic charges. Forge three spikes of the same power together, and now you have something more like 100-120% power, possibly better than a natural Metalborn power. 

In fact, you might not even need to forge spikes. The Set proved you can put multiple Spiritweb fragments into a single spike, even though they will conflict. If you have 25 separate fragments decaying outside a body, you might only need them to sit around long enough to breech their individual Identity threshold before suddenly merging into a functional whole. 

I think there's also the possibility that if a spike's Identity weakens naturally, you could plausibly give a natural Metalborn an Allomantic compliment to their Feruchemy or vice versa, letting you Compound. It would be less efficient than a natural Compounder (natural Feruchemists burning each unit of metal for less Investiture and natural Allomancers tapping less efficiently), but would still have some use. 

In any case, this is still all hypothetical, but I'm curious as to what people's thoughts are- what they agree on, what they disagree with, and anything else to add.

Edited October 30, 2024 by Trusk'our

[Lord Ruler Sylphrena He/Him]

On 10/30/2024 at 1:13 PM, Trusk'our said:

This is a concept I've presented before, albeit only in passing and without much thought put into it. 

After going through my thread musing on what exactly Identity is, I believe it is a sort of frequency that Spiritwebs and, more generally, organized Investiture vibrate to. Identity is integral to Investiture being able to direct itself- with it comes autonomy, removing it makes it easier to be acted upon. 

Interestingly enough, while most forms of Investiture develop an Identity over time, there seem to be examples of organized Investiture that lose their Identity over time. 

The Komashi Nightmares, for example, are Cognitive Shadows with little Identity, which probably explains why they can be controlled by the Father Machine and merge into an amalgamous cloud of Investiture. 

  Hide contents

https://wob.coppermind.net/events/526-youtube-spoiler-stream-6/#e16397

Bye Nick

Is the Shroud made of Identity? Or of souls minus Identity? The passage in Yumi seems to imply both?

Brandon Sanderson

We’re looking more at souls. Souls minus Identity is the path you should be going down. I mean, there is still some Identity in them, is the thing, but yeah.

Furthermore, it seems that Shades' Identity decays over time, shown in their outlines and features blurring over the years. In fact, I think it's quite likely that the "Deepest Ones" are something like the shroud in Yumi, being a conglomeration of old Shades who's Identities have decayed enough to let them function as one entity. 

With all this in mind, I hypothesize Hemalurgic spikes may have something similar going on, where the individual Spiritweb fragments decay over time, which also leads to their Identities decaying. 

This might have been at least part of what caused Era 1 Koloss to retain more and more intelligence over time. As their spikes' Identities decayed over generations, the imposed, damaging Identity interference with their own Spiritwebs was reduced. 

Moving forward with this concept, I think that there are some possibilities to leverage this mechanism for improved Hemalurgic performance. 

For example, let's say you normally get about 80-85% of the Investiture of a Metalborn's power when charging a spike. If you allowed it to decay to something like 40%, perhaps it would retain functionality while not having enough Identity to interfere with other Hemalurgic charges. Forge three spikes of the same power together, and now you have something more like 100-120% power, possibly better than a natural Metalborn power. 

In fact, you might not even need to forge spikes. The Set proved you can put multiple Spiritweb fragments into a single spike, even though they will conflict. If you have 25 separate fragments decaying outside a body, you might only need them to sit around long enough to breech their individual Identity threshold before suddenly merging into a functional whole. 

I think there's also the possibility that if a spike's Identity weakens naturally, you could plausibly give a natural Metalborn an Allomantic compliment to their Feruchemy or vice versa, letting you Compound. It would be less efficient than a natural Compounder (natural Feruchemists burning each unit of metal for less Investiture and natural Allomancers tapping less efficiently), but would still have some use. 

In any case, this is still all hypothetical, but I'm curious as to what people's thoughts are- what they agree on, what they disagree with, and anything else to add.

Hemalurgic Decay applies to attributes as well as powers and because Identity decays when you steal it with H-Duralumin it should decay when along with the powers when left out. There is a limit to Hemalurgic Decay though and 90% of it happens within a day so I don't thinks that's what happening with Koloss.

I think old Koloss would also be much weaker if their attributes were continuing to decay. My theory is that either they have adapted to the changes over time or being viewed as one entity for long enough has partially incorporated the spikes into the Koloss's spirtweb similar to how a walls spirtweb works when forging it. Trauma related to the transformation certainly interferes with brain functions and its hard to say how much is magical and how much is the pain of your skin falling off.

Intentionally leaving your spikes out could be a smart idea. Vin's spike let her break copperclouds and I think that has undergone significant decay. You could probably store much more then average with around 100-120% but if you were blanking identity as well I wonder if you could get 200-250%. Spikes can't store infinite investiture unfortunately and identity contamination could interfere with the use of powers. It's a shame we didn't get more interludes showing the Set's activities because as its stands they know more then we do and we'll have to make some educated guesses.

 

 

 

 

[Trusk'our he/him]

2 hours ago, Lord Ruler Sylphrena said:

There is a limit to Hemalurgic Decay though and 90% of it happens within a day so I don't thinks that's what happening with Koloss.

I don't think it's quite that severe early on.

It seems like there is some pretty bad decay at the beginning, but it slows down after a while.

Spoiler

(from 2023)

https://wob.coppermind.net/events/522/#e16299

Questioner

My question is about Vin's earring. We see later on in the books that hemalurgic spikes lose their charge very rapidly. But Vin leaves her earring in a box. So how does it contain enough charge to still have enough of an effect for her to...?

Brandon Sanderson

I have this on a logarithmic scale. At the beginning, you lose some power pretty quick. And then it evens out. And my answer there is just there was enough left, and it could have, at that point, gone decades without getting to the point that it's a hemalurgic spike in name only. The reason they want to keep... they want to maintain as much power in those as they can. Which is why they talk about this thing. The first day you leave that spike without a host, or without taking certain precautions, you lose the most power that you're ever gonna lose. So those who were aware of this tried very hard not to let that happen. But once it does happen, you end up with something like Vin's earring, which still has a hemalurgic charge, a significant one, enough of one to have a change on the person wearing it. If we didn't do this then, like, koloss spikes, would be meaningless very quickly. I built it into this. It's one of those, like, steep drop off, and then not bad.

Spoiler

(from 2015)

https://wob.coppermind.net/events/69/#e6112

Questioner

Hemalurgy spikes lose power after they are taken out of a body, right?  So why did Vin’s spike still give her power after being so long out of her ear?

Brandon Sanderson

They decay, but it's not a really fast decay. And it also kind of works like a half-life thing. Does that make sense?  So you get an initial just "that's bad" but that had happened to hers long ago when she had taken it out for the first time, right? And then over time, like if that had sat out for hundreds of years you're going to end up with something like Wax's earring that's like-- it gives a bit, but it barely gives anything. But as long as you're kind of keeping it in and out you're going to be a lot better off.

I'd say it'd probably be closer to 50% of its power in the first day, but that's mostly conjecture on my part.

2 hours ago, Lord Ruler Sylphrena said:

I think old Koloss would also be much weaker if their attributes were continuing to decay.

Koloss should, I think, have less and less strength each generation based off of their spikes' decay while outside of hosts. It's not stated as being obvious, but it could be comparable to Allomancers' loss of power over time, where it was slow enough to not be noticeable on the timescale of a few generations.

2 hours ago, Lord Ruler Sylphrena said:

My theory is that either they have adapted to the changes over time or being viewed as one entity for long enough has partially incorporated the spikes into the Koloss's spirtweb similar to how a walls spirtweb works when forging it.

This seems fairly reasonable. Kandra seem to incorporate their Blessings' Identities into their own over time- TLR gave the spikes to the Kandra to uplift Mistwraiths of their choosing, so they couldn't be prepared for specific individuals I believe. Add that to Kandra Blessing being non-transferrable (unless you already have a stable Identity with your own Blessing intact) and imprinting Identity to the spikes feels like the most reasonable assumption to me.

2 hours ago, Lord Ruler Sylphrena said:

You could probably store much more then average with around 100-120% but if you were blanking identity as well I wonder if you could get 200-250%. Spikes can't store infinite investiture unfortunately and identity contamination could interfere with the use of powers. 

I think either the "deliberate decay" or "blank and spike" methods could be used to combine Investitures, and blanking would be straight up more efficient, but I don't know if it will be as easy as previously assumed. It feels a little too easy, and that may just be me, but I'd guess that decay may be an alternative, easier, but less overall desirable way to combine stolen Spiritweb fragments.

Ultimately, overcoming Identity contamination depends on mechanisms we don't fully understand yet (but that won't stop me from trying, obviously).

2 hours ago, Lord Ruler Sylphrena said:

It's a shame we didn't get more interludes showing the Set's activities because as its stands they know more then we do and we'll have to make some educated guesses.

True, that would have been neat.

Hopefully we'll get some more in Era 3 in about seven years. . .

Edited January 10, 2025 by Trusk'our